Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Quotes

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Libraries can in general be too narrow or too wide for the soul.

The excuses we make to ourselves when we want to do something are excellent material for soliloquies, for they are rarely made except when we are alone, and are very often made aloud.

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.

It makes a great difference by what path we come to a knowledge of certain things. If we begin in our youth with metaphysics and religion we can easily proceed along a series of rational conclusions that will lead us to the immortality of the soul. Not every other path will lead to this, at least not quite so easily.

The greatest things in the world are brought about by other things which we count as nothing: little causes we overlook but which at length accumulate

Reading means borrowing. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms

Ein Buch ist ein Spiegel wenn ein Affe hineinsieht so kann kein Apostel heraus gucken.

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.

We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.

It requires no especially great talent to write in such a way that another will be very hard put to it to understand what you have written

First we have to believe, and then we believe.

There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.